I don’t much like prefaces that explain books and I’d especially dislike seeming to use one to make excuses for myself. None of my books is dearer to me than this one, in which I think I’ve best caught the accent of life. Yet it seems such language may be wasted, for I’m well aware that there is a misunderstanding about the book, which I’d very much like to clear up.
When Belle de Jour was first serialized in Gringoire the readers of that journal reacted with a certain liveliness. Some accused me of pointless licentiousness, even of pornography. To them there is no reply possible. If my book failed to convince, then so much the worse for them or me, I don’t know which; in any case there’s nothing I can do about it. To me, it seems impossible to lay bare the drama of spirit and flesh without speaking frankly of both. I don’t believe I’ve gone beyond the limits permitted a writer who has never used lust as bait for his readers.
From the moment I chose to write on this subject I knew the risks I ran. But when the novel was finished, I couldn’t believe anyone might mistake my intentions; otherwise, Belle de Jour would never have appeared.
One must despise false modesty as one scorns poor taste: prudish complaints don’t bother me, intellectual attacks do. It was to disarm them that I decided to do something I hadn’t thought of before, namely, write a preface.
“What an exceptional case!” people commented, and several doctors wrote me that they’d run across Séverines in their practice. It became clear that according to such people Belle de Jour was a successful piece of pathological observation. Now that is precisely what I didn’t mean to convey. Painting the portrait of an ogress wouldn’t interest me, even if I could do it perfectly. What I tried to do in Belle de Jour was show the desperate divorce that can exist between body and soul; between a true, tender, immense love and the implacable demands of the senses. With a few rare exceptions, every man and woman who has loved over a period of time has been burdened by his conflict. It is recognized or not, it tears one apart or it sleeps; but it’s there. A banal conflict described how often! I think, though, that the existence of an extraordinary situation can force this conflict to such a degree of intensity as to allow the instincts to be shown in the fullness of their eternal greatness. Thus, I constructed my story deliberately, not for any meretricious appeal, but as the sole means of touching surely and sharply the depths of every human soul hiding this latent tragedy. I chose my subject as one examines a sick heart: in order better to know how a healthy one functions; or as one studies mental illness, in order to understand how the mind operates.
The subject of Belle de Jour is not Séverine’s sensual aberration; it is her love for Pierre independent of that aberration, and it is the tragedy of that love.
Shall I be the only one to pity Séverine, and to love her?